Emoji Slime Recipe for Developing Empathy & Emotional Awareness

Emoji Slime Recipe and Activities

Emoji faces are the fad right now with my kids. I mean, I love them too! They put expression into text and they are fun. The kids love Emoji’s because of their funny little faces and visual appeal, and… of course the new movie is out. Stemming from their interest we used an Emoji Slime Recipe (two ways) and geared our sensory play towards developing empathy and emotional awareness. It was so much fun that we made not one Emoji Slime Recipe, but two.

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Develop Empathy using Emoji Slime

Before we get to the messy sensory play let me show you how we used Emoji Slime to develop empathy… Key word Develop – Don’t expect to use some emoji slime and do something like this activity with your child and Boom they instantly become empathetic to every person they encounter. Empathy is a fundamental facet of Emotional Intelligence, yet it is not something that you can just “teach” a child, it is a learned trait that needs to develop along with their personality. Like personality, it is individual, some children just feel for others and care about what other people go through, whereas others don’t quite see it that way.

This Emoji Slime, and Emoji’s in general, open the gates for emotive discussion, play, activities and learning that relates to emotional awareness and on putting yourself in someone else shoes; identifying how others feel based upon their facial expressions, the situation, as well as considering the possible feelings of others in certain situations.

The kids (8 & 4) made some Emoji faces with the Emoji slime and it opened the lines of discussion around emotional awareness. I guided their discussion by asking simple questions about their Emoji faces. How does your emoji feel? When have you seen someone feel like this? or If you seen someone with a face like this how would you feel? What could you do if a friend had this face? and so on. Empathy can be a learned trait that helps children to put themselves in someone’s else shoes and care/consider how others feel. This is a very superficial explanation, however it is worthy to note that empathy is a developing skill and for children it really depends on their level of awareness and their stage of development, so this is a great starting point.

Tips for building empathy.

To further develop empathy in children while using Emoji Slime, there are a few key concepts that will help guide your activity:

Kindness: It is through being kind that people learn to practice caring behaviours. During the activity, use vocabulary that not only promotes kindness but reinforces and praises it in the child.

No Judgement: Be conscious of individual beliefs, judgments, opinions, past experience and so on. This can heavily influence a child’s empathy. You can easily guide thoughts away from subjectivity and get your child to put themselves in someone else’s shoes by encouraging them to let go of their own beliefs, or past experience. An example of how subjectivity can influence empathy would be something as simple as an emoji with a sad face and a hypothetical example that emoji fell off their bike – however your child mightn’t empathise with the situation because they’ve fallen off their bike before and they got straight back up! No big deal for them. A simple comment like, “oh, when you fell off your bike you got straight back up, but Emoji here is different, he is feeling different. How might he feel?

Empathy Glasses: Encourage the use of “empathy glasses” if a child is struggling to see past their own judgements, or if they are only thinking with an individualistic view of situations. Empathy Glasses help their capacity to look through empathetic lenses and “see” how others might feel differently to how they might feel.

Imagination: This is something kids are great at. Even using the word “imagine” sparks a child’s thoughts towards putting themselves in someone else’s shoes without them even realising. Use the word imagine while playing with emoji’s. Use it in more ways than one, “imagine this Emoji Slime face just won a swimming race”, “how would this emoji face look if she worked really hard all day and then her work got wrecked… imagine that? how might they feel? Imagine if that was you, what could you do to help yourself? Imagine if it was a class mate, what could you do to help them?”

Mix together and then pour the two solutions together and mix again. You will need to get your hands in there and knead it around. This slime recipe will make a firm rubbery bouncy slime that does not stick. It is similar to the No-stick Slime we made using a Clear Glue available in Australian stores. Check that slime out here.

Pour the first mixture into the borax mixture and stir immediately. Once it clumps up you should use your hands to knead it through. You can remove it from the excess borax and continue working it through for a minute or two. You can use other glues but for some reason Elmer’s is perfect and works every time. When I have used other pva glue and school glues, the success rate isn’t as good. Here is a U.V Ectoplasm Slime we have made before.

Making Emoji Slime face icons

To make the little Emoji face icons I used some googly craft eyes. Some blue tear shape beads. Some pink rubber bands cut into pieces. Some white buttons drawn on with a permanent sharpie. But the most effective facials for the Emoji Slime, was flat yellow counters. Like these here. I had to look up on my phone messenger to get some inspiration and I just quickly doodled on the counters and done a bunch of facial expressions. Remember to use a permanent, like these cool Sharpies here, otherwise little fingers and the slime will slowly wipe off all the facials.

They turned out well and the kids loved playing with them, so much that we did it twice with two different slimes. We have pulled it out a few times to continue playing with and each time the discussion has got more in depth. Both Dimples and Miss T continued to play with the Emoji Slime together, without the guidance of me. While I was listening to them I noticed that they were imagining hypothetical situations and continue emotive discussions with the emoji’s they were making, even without me.